Quick Links

like to make nothing but furniture, but I have to make a living, so I do a lot of turning-rolling pins, bud vases-and I make a lot of small boxes, too. I can average about a hundred bud vases a week, including the finishing. "I grew up in Virginia, Lolh"r B" ..... "nn- and took industrial arts all through high school. I figured that I'd be a teacher. I went to college here in Berea, and afterward taught for two years, from '76 to '78. My in·laws live over there and they let me build this shop in the fall of '79. I was doing construction work-barns, apartment houses. I worked in my shop on the side and tried to get into a guild. They turned me down the first time. Said my finish was too thin and my edges were too sharp. They didn't like my choice of wood, either. Nobody'd ever heard of walnut frames and spalted hackberry panels, so they knocked me down. I changed my techniques a little, and the next time I got in. "A lot of people come to Berea College to pick up woodworking skills, but this is the wrong place for that. You have to go on your own, take a lot of independent courses, work over at Woodcraft Industries. You can learn how to apply production techniques there, how to apply jigs and fixtures. I use some, but most of my templates are just boards and sticks nailed together. "Up behind the barn I've got a pile of walnut logs that I haven't had time to get to the sawmill yet. I have a solar kiln I built, too, but right now all the plastic has blown off. This country gets windy. Right up there by the house, you can see where a tornado came by two years ago. It took the top off that big cedar tree, then it passed about three feet from the shop door-the whole building shook-and went off down the hill along that fence line. It just missed "I' d the big old walnut there. That tree has been dying for years. Every fall, I figure that I've seen the last crop of nuts. I've been letting them sprout where they fall, so something can come up to take the old tree's place, but every spring the tree flowers again. It's just not ready to go." September/October 1984 31